Hi there! If this is your first visit to the Frontier Forums, be sure to check out the FAQ. You will need to register before you can post to, or create discussions. To start viewing discussions on the Frontier Forums, select the forum that you want to view from the selection below.

Supply/Demand: How much is for sale and what the current demand for an item is at the given price

Some markets will be indicated as specialist in some way. This usually means the availability of rare items.

Prices shown on the market:

Prices on the markets are fixed, based on the price for the displayed demand

Markets will have different modifiers and mark-up values

Players can attempt to change the offered price (for buy and sell) by contacting a dealer in a specific good. This can also mean that the supply (or demand) values can be exceeded – ie a dealer may be prepared to buy more than the demand level at a lower price. Specialist items that fall into a standardized category should be sold through a dealer as otherwise they will attract the standard price for their category.

Using the negotiation changes the price by a value derived from the trading reputation too – as long as the amount is worth their while (this will be a settable value – probably if over 50% of the market demand)

Freight missions available from markets for transporting goods for a reward

Missions to be discussed in detail in future topic.

Although a reasonable spread of missions will always be available.

To determine a market’s properties the background simulation takes into account the following system data:

Supply and demand based on market location, e.g.

Agricultural location

Supplies Food

Demands Machinery, Fertiliser

Politics/laws

Determines which commodities are illegal

Population size and standard of living

Increases supply and demand of specific commodities

Meta events like conflicts and disasters

Affects commodity availability and prices

Can be generated by player actions

Aggregated Player trading in the system

Market data availability

When docked all available market data is available

This may be modified by ranking

When in system market prices are available

Outside the system only general information is available

Player’s trade history is available in detail

Newsfeeds provide useful economic data for all systems

Market Data Content

Historical data will be aggregated

Full price data for limited time

Then aggregated for full timeline

Players can cancel a trade before leaving the trading screen

Players can dump cargos at substantially reduced value if it cannot be sold through the market normally.

Some dangerous cargos may need a fee to offload

Jettisoning cargos within a defined distance of a station is illegal

Commodities

There is a list of different commodities

Each commodity has a baseline price

This is the starting price for the commodity in this market

This value is modified by background simulation

This value is modified by player trading

Buy and selling price is modified by the quantity of a commodity being traded

Repeated sales of the same commodity by the same player in the same market will be blocked

There are caps on prices to prevent unrealistic extremes (no negative values)

Based on background simulation data, rare alternate commodities can be generated

These commodities’ value increase the further the player is from the origin system

Value rarity modifiers are capped

Quantities of commodities that are purchased are limited by the player’s currently active ship’s cargo capacity.

Modules can be traded (although not when equipped)

Some commodities require specialist ship equipment

Attempting to transport commodities of these types without said equipment has effects:

Spoiling – the commodity is ruined

Alteration – the commodity changes type

Contamination – the commodity becomes hazardous

Packets of information can be obtained and traded like commodities

Tradable information includes:

System locations

Market locations

Resource gathering locations

Mission/event locations

Information packets automatically update the player’s galactic map as needed when they are acquired

Using a purchased packet means it cannot then be resold.

Player to Player Trading

Players can trade directly with each other

The player trade interface is available when both players are docked at the same market

The player trade interface is available when two players dock ships

The player trade interface is a secure swap allowing players to transfer credits/cargo

Both players must accept the trade before it occurs

Acceptance must be redone by both parties after any change in the trade

Trading occurs in real-time and can be interrupted (for example by being attacked) unless taking place at a space dock

Either player can cancel the trade at any time up to the point both agree

GUI request

Very nice. Hopefully the distance to the space station where jettisoning cargo becomes illegal is a variable distance so that for major places like Sol, the whole system is protected (ie illegal to dump) while a small system might only have a restriction within the gravitational field of the planet so that debris does not affect the station etc

Look of the thing...

Not totally crazy about the look of the trading screen. It's functional and graph based, which is fine, but also a bit dark and impersonal.

Would be cool to add a more human element - eg views of the dock-side markets with all the hub-bub of people and robots coming and going.

Pilots will have spent a long time cruising the empty reaches of space - trading should feel a bit more like a crowded human activity (think trading floor crossed with Morroccan Souk!) with exciting products from across the known galaxy!

Would be cool if the trading screen reflected that in terms of look and feel...

"Repeated sales of the same commodity by the same player in the same market will be blocked"

Can you please explain what this means, and why it is needed/wanted?
Taken to the extreme, this would forbid trade routes. I assume that is not the intention.

I think it's to ensure that people move on with their cargo, rather than just sitting at a space-station. Otherwise a group of players could buy up the total supply of fuel/missiles/whatever, and then just sit there extorting other players. That's not really what trading's about, so is discouraged.

As long as you have moved your cargo some distance from the space-station you bought it at, you should be fine. (Assuming my interpretation/recollection is correct, that is).

"Repeated sales of the same commodity by the same player in the same market will be blocked"

It would be my desire that this could be discouraged by an "AI" or "Trade System" mechanism: rather than a "Block". For example an "AI" might show up with the horded commodity every time the player tried to sell same.

Quick fixes causes other problems. If this is an anticipated exploit of the trading system, the team has time now to fix it... in a more interesting way.

Maybe roosting at a dock with a precious commodity might attached thieves...

Maybe there might be a problem at the dock moving the cargo...dock strike...

Maybe the hold gets infested with vermin...or best before date pops...

The point is: creating rules to protect flaws in a systems, defeats the point of the system.

It actually makes fairly coherent sense from a fiction point-of-view though. In real life, a market wouldn't let you behave that way, as you'd be messing their system up. Who's going to return somewhere they've previously been ripped-off at? Unless the space-station is seeing a cut, logically they wouldn't allow that kind of behaviour.

Bear in mind that the space-station owns the loading/unloading equipment, so it's realistic that players will have to operate under terms and conditions.

Quantities of commodities that are purchased are limited by the player’s currently active ship’s cargo capacity.

I don't see why there is a limitation such as this. Practically, buying something means it only changes ownership but doesn't necessarily have to move physically. The items are stored on that planet or station anyway (maybe for a fee), the owner tag just changes. It only changes locale when i actually start shipping it somewhere else. And since i'll be able to rent hangars it doesn't make sense why i can't store larger quantities of items, too.

How the engine handles things like this is an entirely different matter of course, but i see this as a rather arbitrary limitation of the trading gameplay. So could somebody please elaborate what the thinking behind this mechanic is?

I don't see why there is a limitation such as this. Practically, buying something means it only changes ownership but doesn't necessarily have to move physically. The items are stored on that planet or station anyway (maybe for a fee), the owner tag just changes. It only changes locale when i actually start shipping it somewhere else. And since i'll be able to rent hangars it doesn't make sense why i can't store larger quantities of items, too.

How the engine handles things like this is an entirely different matter of course, but i see this as a rather arbitrary limitation of the trading gameplay. So could somebody please elaborate what the thinking behind this mechanic is?

Although you can rent hangars, you cannot store goods in them, only ships, and only EMPTY ships at that... you cannot even store goods in ships you're not actually using.

There is a lot of discussion of that in this thread... and also posts from the devs as to why they don't want you to stockpile goods... which is probably pertinent to your original question.

Pecisk- "I will sound as broken record, but this won't change." David Braben - "So some news - we will be reversing this change shortly"

Thanks for the link, jabokai. I read through almost all of the 13 pages, and it seems most opponents of an "item hangar" are just worried that the ability to store cargo would open the possibility of exploiting the economy.

Personally i understand the point and it's probably valid if you have a very small amount of systems with only a few places to trade. It would be easy to just buy all charges of an item and wait for its price to rise due to supply and demand mechanics. However, the universe of Elite should be "a bit" bigger and therefore it should not be possible to influence a market that way, maybe locally but not on a bigger scale - there are just too many retailers. Also, as an example to remedy this situation, having to pay storage costs for items (costs depending on amount of storage space used) on a daily basis could quickly void any returns of goods stored for a longer period than say two days, making it useless to stockpile. The storage costs could even be bigger for exotic items (since they have to be protected or cooled, for example) in order to avoid players to stockpile them anyway. However, while thinking about this a bit more, it's probably not such a good idea in the end since costs for everyone rise, not just for busy traders. Maybe a "trading license" with different levels might be a solution, which maybe limits the amount of items you are allowed to buy on a per-day basis. I don't know, but i'm sure there are ways to avoid that market-play.

In the end, there is no reason why a game that will feature complex things like planetary landings, walking in ships and on planets and a huge procedurally generated universe doesn't give me the freedom to have something simple as storage space. Sorry to say that, but this is not 1984 anymore, it's silly. I'm not a trader, but i'd like to have the option to stockpile some equipment and goods, and i don't want to have to use a workaround like storage chars to get around it. That's the Freelancer way, ten years ago.

I'd love to hear some constructive ideas on how to handle storage space vs. economic exploitation, because i'd really like to see some form of storage space in the final game. A discussion about the usefulness is welcome, too (maybe i'm just spoiled by other games).

Not totally crazy about the look of the trading screen. It's functional and graph based, which is fine, but also a bit dark and impersonal.

Would be cool to add a more human element - eg views of the dock-side markets with all the hub-bub of people and robots coming and going.

Pilots will have spent a long time cruising the empty reaches of space - trading should feel a bit more like a crowded human activity (think trading floor crossed with Morroccan Souk!) with exciting products from across the known galaxy!

Would be cool if the trading screen reflected that in terms of look and feel...

Just my opinion...

Mike Evans wrote this in another thread:

Originally Posted by Mike Evans

It'll be extremely likely that all interfaces in the game will belong to the ship. There shouldn't be any out of game interfaces sans the main menu screen most likely. Thus I don't think there will be the option for multiple monitors being used to display interfaces because there will be no interface to display that way if you get me.

In other words. Every GUI (trading, starmap, hardpoints of the ship etc...) will be a part of the ships own holographic HUD. A bit similar to the different holographic screens you can see in "Deadspace". They will most likely be shown as a semi transparent overlay on top of your view, which means that you will probably still see out through the cockpit windows into the interior of the station eventhough the "screen" is projected in front of you. As Mike says, you will never be "taken out of the cockpit" and put into another "screen" as such. So all the activity in the station will still be visible around you at all times. Way more immersive IMO.

Not totally crazy about the look of the trading screen. It's functional and graph based, which is fine, but also a bit dark and impersonal.

Would be cool to add a more human element - eg views of the dock-side markets with all the hub-bub of people and robots coming and going.

Pilots will have spent a long time cruising the empty reaches of space - trading should feel a bit more like a crowded human activity (think trading floor crossed with Morroccan Souk!) with exciting products from across the known galaxy!

Would be cool if the trading screen reflected that in terms of look and feel...

I think trading between players should depend on system ie proximity to a base. You can only transfer cash if there is a bank nearby to receive it
Even today, money is mostly just data in database on a secure server.

There are games that allow station storage of player-owned trade goods and a Market that is completely accessible remotely, including placing buy and sell orders. why this isn't the standard in every game that includes trading as a game mechanic is not understandable.